For Conservatives... an Advantage? (Part 1)

I started writing this back before the election. I was thinking the whole time, "Wow, this is so important for people to read. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Gotta blog on this baby!" Then I started thinking of insights I wanted to share about the way Catholic Conservatives versus Catholic Liberals are dealt with by the Church. So I put off posting it, and I kept putting it off until now. [Note: I wrote this paragraph on Tuesday, 2/12/19]

Yes; I put this off several more days because I kept thinking of more things to say. Finally I decided to break this up into smaller pieces, this being the main one. So hopefully next week I'll post more thoughts—I have to travel again.

This is a very insightful Quillette article by Matthew Blackwell written about a year ago. Blackwell It examines temperamental differences between conservatives and liberals (Blackwell uses the term progressives). Excerpt:

Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don’t hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives. This he calls the ‘conservative advantage,’ and it goes a long way in explaining the different ways each side deals with opinions unlike their own. People get angry at what they don’t understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don’t understand.

Haidt’s research echoes arguments made by Thomas Sowell in A Conflict of Visions and Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate. Both Sowell and Pinker contend that conservatives see an unfortunate world of moral trade-offs in which every moral judgment comes with costs that must be properly balanced. Progressives, on the other hand, seem to be blind to, or in denial about, these trade-offs, whether economic and social; theirs is a utopian or unconstrained vision, in which every moral grievance must be immediately extinguished until we have perfected society. This is why conservatives don’t tend to express the same emotional hostility as the Left; a deeper grasp of the world’s complexity has the effect of encouraging intellectual humility. The conservative hears the progressive’s latest demands and says, “I can see how you might come to that conclusion, but I think you’ve overlooked the following...” In contrast, the progressive hears the conservative and thinks, “I have no idea why you would believe that. You’re probably a racist.”

Does this ring true to me? Certainly, and I am glad we now have scientific evidence to prove what we have experienced as outspoken conservatives for years. I can vividly recall the fierce accusations of a hardline leftist in a heated interaction; most of the heat was coming from his side. When trying to reason with him about why conservatives dislike the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), he told me "You just want people to die!" Had I responded, "Well, you just want to have everything for free, bite the hand that feeds you, and..." then that would be a response in kind, and this "argument" would fall flat. But I rarely hear this sort of rhetoric on the right, and when I have, there is an immediate distancing by other conservatives in the vicinity. Thinking conservatives do not want to be lumped in with unconstructive accusation.

[Side note: In fact, most conservatives do not want to be "lumped in" at all with anything. That is why MAGA hats are such a new phenomenon.]

My friend Nate noticed the same tendency in a very good recent post on his blog, Rotten Chestnuts:

Both sides often make relevant points about important data, and both sides seem to avoid what the other one is addressing leading to a frustration of everybody talking past each other. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that the [Trump] fans seemed to make an effort to confront the counter arguments a bit more often – the [Trump] skeptics rarely so. In fact the skeptics seemed to go out of their way to [avoid] even acknowledg[ing] competing evidence.

(I hope Nate doesn't mind my slight correction – it is what I think he is trying to say. We all could use an editor.)

My theory is that there are really two possible reasons we conservatives don't respond in kind as I described. One is that we don't presume to know motives. I don't really know that someone pushing for Obamacare is trying to stick it to the man and get handouts. The other one is that even if I suspect that this might be his motivation, there is no rhetorical value in throwing this at him. He reduces his chance of winning the argument by accusing me of murderous intent, but I'm not about to give ground by assertions of larcenous intent. Even if I was right I would lose in the mind of onlookers who thought my opponent's motives were pure.

Two conclusions from the leftist's behavior are easy for me to imagine. The first conclusion: the liberal has no desire to convince me I'm wrong or a bit "off" in my thinking. He just means to assert his opinion, usually loudly and in a derisive way which is difficult to rebut. He wants to silence my voice. Whether I shut up out of shame or out of frustration, this is his best hope of "winning" — a forfeit from his opponent. I believe this is why we were all so gratified to hear Brett Kavanaugh swinging back at the "coordinated effort to destroy [his] good name" by false accusations in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. He wasn't having any of it; he wasn't going to give up. We're use to people on our side sitting by and "taking their lumps".

The second possible conclusion: he really does want to convince me he is right and thinks this is the best way to go about it. This is less likely in my opinion, but I admit it is possible. It would mean that I have to "change my mind" in a sort of nominal way to be able to go with the flow — his flow. There is still no logic involved, and probably no real willful change of heart or mind. Maybe the liberal imagines he can pull off the ol' Jedi Mind Trick?

Going back to Blackwell's beginning paragraph:

When I disagree with a conservative friend or colleague on some political issue, I have no fear of speaking my mind. I talk, they listen, they respond, I talk some more, and at the end of it we get along just as we always have. But I’ve discovered that when a progressive friend says something with which I disagree or that I know to be incorrect, I’m hesitant to point it out. This hesitancy is a consequence of the different treatment one tends to receive from those on the Right and Left when expressing a difference of opinion. I am not, as it turns out, the only one who has noticed this.

I remarked to my wife last night that reading this made me want to be even more empathetic in by use of rhetoric and conciliatory in my tone when I debate with anyone, especially liberals. I never ever want to respond in kind. It is obvious that Trump is not so worried about this, but I don't think we have to imitate him by any means just because he is the de facto head of the more conservative political party. But typically the people in the Trump Resistance camp are even worse at seeing the other side because they respond in kind almost reflexively and with barely any self-awareness. It's like Cleveland talker Mike Trivisonno famously stated two years ago, "The people who hate Trump the most don't realize how much they're like him."

[In my next installment, I'll talk about the effect this phenomenon has had on the Catholic Church.]

Brand confusion about the Benedict Option

I had been meaning to post on this for awhile, but better late than never. I was reading a post from Father Shenan Boquet of Human Life International when another of his older posts caught my eye about Sanctuary Cities for Christians. Immediately I though "Hmmm, sounds kind of Benedict Option-y." And since he invokes the term and links to Dreher's blog, it seems upon a quick, first like he's getting on board the BenOp train. Except:

Still, it’s time we give this a shot before it is too late, if for no other reason than to help awaken those believers who are still sleepily going along with the culture. As one LGBT-celebratory Christian leader has recently argued, the “middle ground is disappearing.” Writer Rod Dreher and others have noted this has been underway for some time. Dreher reports on his blog how a growing number of parents are surprised to find themselves having to pull their children out of grade school as gender ideology has become dogmatic seemingly overnight, and schools are constantly undermining parental rights and privileges.

He even throws in the obligatory Benedict Option "we're not cutting and running" disclaimer which we are used to hearing:

I want to make this perfectly clear: There is a difference between running in fear and trying to escape reality, and a strategic retreat to a place of strong footing, from which a community can act in love and truth and build a real culture again.

Upon a closer reading, however, Father seems to be asking for a greater civic involvement of Christians and other people of good will who respect religious freedom to achieve the goal of justice and spiritual flourishing. The tone of the article is much more akin to "taking the country back" than the building of religious Christians-only safe spaces. One of the reasons it's difficult to see this first is that Fr. Boquet is very careful not to call for any direct political action, but instead uses the illegal-alien sanctuary city concept analogically:

....We need sanctuary cities for Christians.

There is a precedent for this: There are some 200 cities in the United States that have decided, through official policy if not in law, to not enforce federal laws on immigration. In essence, these “sanctuary cities” refuse to cooperate with federal agents when it comes to reporting crimes committed by those in the country illegally, arguing that such reporting would create a climate of fear and would ensure a lack of cooperation between migrant communities and local law enforcement.

There is an insinuation between the lines that in his proposed Christian sanctuary cities, officials would look the other way when someone refuses to sign a same-sex marriage license or break any other ordinance which violates a federal ordinance and yet upholds the moral law. That is his clear intention, yet, as I stated, he is careful not to explicitly lay out this rebellious course of action.

I think that Fr. Boquet is "glomming onto" the Benedict Option because it is a term out there already, but there is a pretty big difference between it and what he is advocating. A Christian Sanctuary City as he describes is would be a place where you don't have to be a Christian to live in or belong to the way a Benedict Option community is described. These cities would become strategic outposts in the culture wars rather than strategic withdrawals from the culture wars.

It has become unfashionable to speak of the "culture wars" due to the scorn of the elite cultural leftists who are claiming victory, those like Dreher who are advocating surrender and those still fighting in the ranks but tempted by war-weariness to cease. But this war is merely a part of the ancient War of good versus evil, and there is no reason to shy away from calling it a war. We didn't start it, and it will never end until Judgment Day. Each Christian and person of good will must fight these battles in the way he sees fit, trying not to rebuke others who fight it differently, at least not publicly.

On the other hand, I will continue to rebuke the Benedict Option because it represents a refusal to fight, withdrawing from the battle to instead hurl inane insults from their towers at those still fighting on the ground like those Frenchmen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The rest of us will continue to fight the culture war, even if to many it seems like we're merely banging coconuts together.

I agree with the man: it should be about ideas

I advise everyone to sign up for Speaker Paul Ryan's updates. He is one of the most sensible people in the top levels of government in our country right now. It is very refreshing to read the things he communicates each day.



Reminds me of a quote: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." True. Often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, this proverb is probably much older.

The Obvious Comparison

I was going for a run the other day in 25 degree weather and I began thinking about two of the most perplexing people alive at this moment. I mused that maybe I should do a Top Ten list of things that Pope Francis and Donald Trump have in common. But the two main things I came up with is that photographers seem to love to capture their facial expressions and they put their feet in their mouth a lot. So I gave up, even though I knew it would be instructive to point out the similarities of two gentlemen who are so good at surprising, perplexing and making headlines.

So along comes this really good article. It's worth reading, and it details some commonalities of these two super-famous men. Here's the most interesting part to me, something I've been wondering about for some time now:

But iconoclasm, though exhilarating for a while, may not deliver the revitalization it promises. For all his global popularity, the pope has failed to improve the reputation of the church he leads. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found “no evidence that Francis’s likability has boosted Catholic identification, worship attendance or prayer.”

This may be because, as the German writer Martin Mosebach has observed, Francis presents himself as a “dynamic, unconventional, courageous pope with a golden heart” in contrast to a church that is a “crusty, dead, faithless, rigid machine.” Why go to church? Better to follow the pope on Twitter.

That makes me sad; I'm afraid it rings 100% true. I don't hate the Pope the way some people on the Catholic right seem to, but I don't really see him as doing anything that great. He needs a lot of damage control, and no one is coming back to the church because of his "new style".

Obviously this is sort of the feeling I have about Trump. My opinion of him has gone down since he decided to stink up the GOP primaries, but I don't hate him.

I guess the biggest similarity to note is between Catholics who support the Pope and Trump's voters. It doesn't matter if they do or say something cringe-worthy, we still support them. In fact, I would suggest that Donald Trump is already a Pope of sorts, judging from his followers' devotion. But who am I to judge?

How could the people be so wrong

as to consistently support Donald Trump for President?

But this is where American politics - not the politics of a Laurus or a Putin, but American politics - separates itself from religion.

With religion, the people are either right or wrong with respect to an absolute revealed Truth. In American politics - as opposed to the politics implicit within the hypothetical Benedict Option - the right of the people to decide for themselves what is right for them is the persisting political Truth, regardless of whether that decision ultimately proves to be for good or ill.

In the wake of the passing of Justice Scalia, this irony becomes poignantly salient, that Justice Scalia's entire legacy was one of preventing him and his fellow justices from intervening in the form of what Andrew McCarthy and others before him have referred to as an elite super-legislature to prevent Americans from freely deciding how they would be governed, no matter how right or wrong others, judicial elites in particular, might view such decisions.

Because of Scalia, we still have the right to choose a Trump, or, hopefully, better, and, because of Scalia we still no longer live in a romantically imagined Middle Age, where we might dream like school girls of life under a kindly and wise paternal czar but, for our dreaming, find ourselves saddled by a Stalin instead.

Choose this election who will serve

John Zmirak lays out the stark choice ahead of voters.

That is how clear American politics is becoming. Here’s what the next election should be about, if we do our jobs: The Little Sisters of the Poor vs. The Big Merchants of Baby Parts.

It really is that simple. We must press every politician in America to take a clear, explicit stand on two critical issues which can rouse the right passions of Americans: Religious freedom and abortion profiteering. No Republican who won’t support the First Amendment Defense Act and zero out federal aid to Planned Parenthood is worth even two seconds’ consideration. We should flee them as near occasions of sin.

So no, he's not "giving the GOP a pass" as some of us sensible Christian conservatives are accused of doing from time to time.

There’s a lot of junk in the Republican pond, but it still supports life from time to time. The Democratic, by comparison, is a mauve-coated pool of radioactive, flesh-eating bacteria. Their connection with any meaningful concept of the Good has long been tenuous, but now it has snapped. How else to explain apparently sane people who would use police and prisons to punish Christian bakers, but not the merchants of unborn children’s lungs and livers. The Republicans are imperfect but not committed to such monstrosities, showing glimmers of right reason on a list of important issues. Theirs is the only party where at least some leading politicians

• Don’t want to actively persecute the church with punitive taxes and lawsuits if we don’t bless acts of sodomy at our altars and teach our kids to approve them in church schools.

• Don’t want to send the police to stop nuns from caring for the poor unless they hand out abortion pills.

• Don’t want to shovel half a billion dollars every year to the abortionists of racist-founded Planned Parenthood, who appear to be making a tidy profit selling organs from butchered babies.

• Aren’t in the pockets of self-serving public employee unions that want to vote themselves the kind of benefits that just bankrupted Greece.

• Aren’t so drunk on multiculturalist absinthe that they mix up jihadist thugs with Christian preachers.

• Don’t want your taxes to fund sex-change operations for recently amnestied illegal aliens and felony prisoners.

Seems simple enough to me.

Walker, Iowa Ranger?

I hope Scott Walker — who is "my guy" at this point — can navigate this gambling issue effectively. Excerpt:

Another issue where Governor Walker will have to tread carefully in Iowa is the expansion of state-approved gambling. Walker will have to decide by February 19 whether to approve a proposed $800 million Menominee Indian tribal casino in Kenosha. “Influential social conservatives in Iowa are warning Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that approving a proposed Kenosha casino next month could hurt his presidential bid” was the lead paragraph of a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article this month. Newly elected Iowa U.S. senator Joni Ernst joined 600 other Republicans in sending Walker a petition urging him adopt a “No Expanding Gaming” policy. Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent social conservative in Iowa who led the successful defeat in 2010 of three Supreme Court justices who had approved same-sex marriage, has also written a letter to Walker highlighting the “increased societal problems of divorce, bankruptcy, debt, depression, and suicide” that gambling can produce. In 2012, Vander Plaats’s last-minute endorsement of Rick Santorum helped propel the former Pennsylvania senator to a photo-finish victory over Mitt Romney in Iowa.

I dislike gambling because of its zero-sum nature as well as its negative societal effects, the two being closely related. But it wouldn't be a deal-killer for me if Walker came out on the wrong side of it. Sounds from this mention of this kingmaker, Plaats, like it might be a deal-killer for Walker, though.

"The Government-Shrinkage Folks"

Yay! That's us! From self-identified "numbers nerd" Chris Cillizza's WaPo article:

54. A majority of Americans who went to the polls Nov. 4 believe that the “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals,” while just 41 percent think “the government should do more to solve problems.” Those numbers suggest that the long-running battle over what government can and should do (and how much it should do) is tilting back toward the smaller-is-better crowd that dominated in the mid- and late 1990s. The early years of Obama’s presidency were defined by a belief that government might need to do more than it had during the latter days of the George W. Bush administration. (Think Hurricane Katrina.) But the pendulum is in the process of swinging back to the government-shrinkage folks.

Some of the other numbers on which Cillizza reports are somewhat interesting. Like the 4% edge the dems have among women actually being higher than the 1% edge in the 2010 mid-terms. Maybe the war on women drumbeat brought out some more liberal women than in 2010? I really hope the dems keep up the war on women mantra. Among most on the right and center it just sounds so stupid, yet it epitomizes the way they think.

Also the 36% of Hispanics is a slightly interesting number to me. But not terribly. I think the term "Hispanic" or "Latino" is simply too amorphous a group to make much of. The vote of Cuban-Americans has been closer to 50% than that of Puerto Rican-Americans which the dems have a solid lock on.

A question for all you math whizzes out there

My question is this: what race or racial mix will the next first black President of the United States be? I mean, OK, the first first black President was 100% white. (Yes, you are reading these sentences correctly.) Then the second first black President, Barack Obama, is actually not black but bi-racial, we are reminded.

So is the next first black President going to be 100% black or three quarters black? Or maybe some other mix entirely? Or maybe Indian? I'm of the mind that he or she will be 3/4 black, then we'll go 7/8, then 15/16, etc. and we will never get a 100% pure black man or woman as the President. What is this opinion based on? That's a good question, and I'll see if I can maybe come up with something, or maybe I'll ask some guy wearing a white sheet over his head.

Some people might be depressed when they realize that we might never get a prezzie with a perfect soul brother pedigree. But it's not really a big deal because no one is 100% white either. All us white folk have been mixed in with the descendants of Adam and Eve who were black. And that's a good thing, since the alternative is to be the evil creation of a crazy black Frankenstein named Yakub by using selective breeding and magnets.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

2014 Election Results Website & Coverage

I'm going to be trying out Townhall's election results website tonight. Probably I'll also be checking out Fox's page from time to time.

Hugh Hewitt will be doing election coverage tonight until 1am, and the show should be available on WHK radio by clicking here. I'm planning on blogging at least 3 or 4 times, so stay tuned.

Ideological purity versus principled victory

I like Ted Cruz, and I'm sure I would vote exactly the same as he does in the Senate. But this article presents facts and many quotes from Reagan to show exactly where his rhetoric is reality-challenged. His blind spot is shared by many in the conservative movement whom I greatly respect and admire, including Rush Limbaugh. Excerpt:

Cruz is fond of contrasting his stance with those of “Washington consultants” who allegedly say that “standing for principle is inconsistent with winning elections.” He says that there are only two approaches available to conservatives, theirs or his. But this is a false dichotomy.

Reagan knew that brazenly drawing a line in the sand for the American people was the worst way to combat the liberal establishment. He explained to the readers of National Review that Goldwater lost in 1964 because Democrats had portrayed conservatives as advocating “a radical departure from the status quo.” “Time now for the soft sell,” he said, “to prove our radicalism was an optical illusion.”

Reagan also knew that ideological purity is the enemy of principled victory. In 1967, speaking to a conservative grassroots group, then-governor Reagan set out his vision for the GOP:

"We cannot offer [to individualists] a narrow sectarian party in which all must swear allegiance to prescribed commandments. Such a party can be highly disciplined, but it does not win elections. This kind of party soon disappears in a blaze of glorious defeat, and it never puts into practice its basic tenets, no matter how noble they may be."

Reagan knew that victory can come only by assembling a coalition of people, not all of whom will agree on every topic.

Barone on Obama: Transfixed with his self-image

Great article. Best one I've seen on the difference between Obama and a more traditional, successful American politician like Bill Clinton. Excerpt:

Reagan deployed that ability in establishing productive relations with allies such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with whom he was by no means always in agreement, and with adversaries such as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose character, strengths and weaknesses he shrewdly assessed.

The ability to read other people comes more easily if you're interested in others, curious to learn what makes them tick. It comes harder or not at all if you're transfixed with your image of yourself.

Which seems to be the case with Barack Obama. Not only is he not much interested in the details of public policy, as Jay Cost argues persuasively in a recent article for the Weekly Standard. He is also, as even his admirers concede, not much inclined to schmooze with other politicians, even his fellow Democrats.

That goes double for Republicans. House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, is one of the most transparent and least guileful politicians I've encountered. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy and liberal Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., had no difficulty reaching agreement with him on the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

Is there really any difference between Rod Dreher and Frank Luntz?

After reading Molly Ball's recent piece on Frank Luntz in the Atlantic and blithely skipping most of it for not "cohering as a sociopolitical diagnosis", Rod Dreher finally finds a soft underpart he can sink his prehensile lips into with a condescending pity:

When he’s at home in Los Angeles, The Newsroom is the high point of Luntz’s week. He turns off his phone and gets a plate of spaghetti bolognese and a Coke Zero and sits in front of his 85-inch television, alone in his 14,000-square-foot palace. “That’s as good as it gets for me,” he says.

Let's leave for another day the fact that, first, it wasn't all that hard at all for Luntz's comments throughout Ball's article to "cohere as a sociopolitical diagnosis" (duh: Obama is a ferocious demagogue, and we are lucky we don't yet have class riots in the streets) for anyone not indentured to Obamacons like Wick Allison for their daily bread, and, second, Luntz's tone throughout the article and especially at the ending was anything but Dreher's opportunistically projected and self-serving "despair":

But today, Luntz is late for his afternoon talk to a D.C. lobbying shop. "Am I whining?" he asks. "Just say it if I am." I tell him it sounds like he's going through something very real, very human. "I am nothing if not human," he says, breaking into a grin. "I'm super-human. I'm a human-and-one-fifth. My God, if I'm not careful, I'll have to go not to the big and tall but the big and bigger store!" And then he walks away toward the elevator, off to do his soft-shoe routine for another audience of the rich and powerful.

Throughout the article, far from despairing, Luntz appears to be, at worst, merely reflective, and, at his wickedest, having a bit of fun at Ball's expense seeing how far he can put her on about the "agony" she finally takes away for her typical reader.

Dreher, though, in typical fashion thinks he has found another now-lower-on-the-food chain prey item he can pounce on when it finally seems safely down, cloaking his rush for the underparts in his trademark unctuous concern trolling compassion.

But for whatever Luntz's current career and life transitions, he's not having to let his pipes drip and he's not dependent on drugs and meditative prayer simply to function as an organism because of his congenital anxiety.

So that may be one difference between Luntz and Dreher.

Aside from that, though, both are word mechanics for hire who have built careers using their understanding of the uses and effects of language on the easily gulled to manipulate and control the destinies of their respective religious, political and cultural allies and enemies to the best of their abilities.

Luntz, however, has made no effort to disguise what he does for a living as anything else.  So that may be another sharp difference from Dreher.

Apart from the minor factors of being less well known, less influential, less affluent, less honest and aboveboard about his career efforts and in poorer mental and physical health than Luntz, then, how is Rod Dreher really any different from Frank Luntz at all?

Simply because, within that carefully curated chamber Dreher has created to shelter his high anxiety, the rebounding echoes of his own voice and those of that select handful of sycophants who are admitted to the temple claim he is?

How do you see it?

So how does Rod Dreher actually practice his beliefs out in the real world?

Brave Sir Roddy stamps his foot and runs away. Takes a powder. Hits the road, Jack. Becomes a late Catholic (or parrot, depending on your species). Bats for the other team in protest.

He explains here:

In a few minutes, I’m going to walk over to the courthouse and vote either Democrat or Libertarian as a protest, which is to say, I’m throwing my vote away to object to the Tea Party. The current crisis in Washington is the last straw.

His very first commenter, sk, wonders how this makes a bit of sense at all:

sk says:   
October 12, 2013 at 1:05 pm   

“Jay Morris is pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-traditional marriage! Jay Morris will lead the fight to build the wall along Mexico and protect our nation’s borders!

… The single most important action facing our Congress is to defund Obamacare.”

I really don’t get what is wrong with these statements, per your own standards. He wants to restrict abortion, he wants to restrict illegal immigration, and he wants to restrict gay marriage. He wants to defund Obamacare. He also believes in the right to bear arms, and supports freedoms related to gun ownership. I feel like I understand pretty clearly where he stands.

Are you expecting him to write a replacement for Obamacare (perhaps his own 3,000 page alternative document)? Are you expecting a freshman congressman to have a plan for rewriting the laws in these five issues? Are you expecting that a freshman congressman that you vote for will have any direct, independent power to do any of these things? You are the political analyst: as you know, freshman congressman basically have the power to vote.

So perhaps you expect each candidate for their first time in national office to understand the legal and bureaucratic outlines of how to genuinely make changes on the five hot button issues of our time, to have written appropriate legislation to say how they would independently change things, and then acknowledge that they actually won’t have the power (due to their inexperience and freshman status) to do any of it?

I’m just not getting your complaint.

sk

Rod feels exactly the same way, then goes on to explain why voting for this Republican candidate is the wrong approach, but voting for the Democrat or Libertarian instead in protest is the right one:

[NFR: For immigration restriction? Me too. But "build a wall along the Mexican border" is unreasonable, and I don't think he really means it. I think he's pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment. And if he does mean it, that's worse, because it's crazy to think we could build a wall that long. Against abortion? Me too. But what is he going to do about it, given the realities of the Supreme Court's rulings? What can be done in the real world? I'd like to know. He doesn't say. Gun ownership? I probably agree with him, but I don't get the level of panic many conservatives have over the issue. On Obamacare, you know what I would like to see? Republican Congressmen talking about how Obamacare can be reformed. For better of for worse, defunding the thing is not going to happen. They're tilting at windmills. I get that he hates Obamacare. That was a respectable position two years ago. Today, though, Obamacare is in place. Continuing to fight its very existence is futile, and dramatically hurting the party. That all these GOP candidates are taking these maximalist positions, despite the political realities on the ground having changed, is very discouraging. It tells me that conservatives who don't like Obamacare are going to lose bigtime because these Tea Party people are unwilling to compromise at all. If it's all-or-nothing, and you lose, then your side gets nothing. -- RD]

See, it works like this. As long as everything is theoretical, whether religion or politics or "culture", Dreher's catch-all term for that vast universe of things he doesn't understand and can't articulate, it's all good. There aren't any consequences in theory, except, of course, only theoretical ones. It's safe and warm in theory, because theory doesn't have to exert and defend itself out in the real world, only real choice and action does. If you're only theoretically a conservative, everyone can still like you, because you haven't actually done anything real to them out in the world through any sort of boots on the ground political action. You haven't taken any less than perfect actions that might get you scorned or laughed at. You can "be" against abortion and your friend's wife, who just had one, will still invite you over for dinner, because you're harmless. You're safe, like your wife or girlfriend's gay guy friend. Better to stay safe, not like those actual real world Republicans whose hands, unlike Pilate's, can never be absolutely, perfectly clean.

Of course, in theory, safe you hasn't actually restricted abortion, or illegal immigration, or gay marriage, or anything else worth doing either, but you are still a hero, because of course you believe in heroism. And you just know that, when exactly the right opportunity presents itself, you'll be that hero you believe in, or that conservative. Because that's how the world works. In theory. And in the 8-year-old mind.

Unless, of course, the porridge or the Congressman is not just exactly right, the way you demand they should be. Then you can play your get-out-of-heroism card, because, you know, they're not playing by your rules. Rod's all for the theoretical conservative bowl of porridge, you see. It's just that, just as with the case of his personal Rodist Catholicism, out in the real world where there isn't any theoretical Conservative Party, only Democrats or Republicans, the real world Republicans haven't made the porridge exactly the way Rod would have prepared it in his own theoretical kitchen. Too hot perhaps. Or too cold. Maybe not seasoned to perfection. And what sort of hero eats an imperfect actual porridge? I mean, really? Or remains a communicant in an imperfect Catholic Church? Or votes for a real Republican Congressman over a theoretical conservative one? Or a Democrat?

So the only way for Rod to really register the depths of his developmentally arrested, petulant rejection of the imperfect real adult world that won't conform to his childish, imaginary demands is to vote for that Republican Congressman's Democrat opponent. That'll show them how he wants his porridge. That'll show them all!

Makes perfect sense to me.

Coda: so how did Rod really vote? Only he knows. Hell, he might have even voted Republican, for that very same Congressman he tore apart in his blog post. So what? What difference does it make? As with all things Rod, the important thing here is not what Rod actually did, but what he talked about doing. Oh, not what he talked about doing to further conservatism, or to restrict abortion, or illegal immigration, or gay marriage, or to preserve religious liberty. What he talked about doing that parroted what the Obamacons who pay him want to hear said about their political opponents. About Republican Congressmen running for office.

So maybe Rod Dreher really is a principled, man of action conservative after all - at least when it comes to conserving his own livelihood. When it comes to actually standing and fighting for anything else, though...

Brave Sir Roddy ran away.
Bravely ran away, away.
When real world choice it reared it's head
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes Brave Sir Roddy turned about
He gallantly chickened out.

Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat.
Oh bravest of the brave, Sir Roddy.

Dr. Ben Carson exposes the Politically Correct agenda

...and advocates common sense conservatism.



Love how he explains why the European system sucks compared to the American system. He just calling it the way it is.

Also note: God is not progressive. And He doesn't favor a progressive taxation system.

How to use your WiFi SSID to promote your message

Made this short how-to video with Camtasia Studio. Except I don't know how to upload this in HD. So you'll probably have to blow this up to full screen to see how it's done.



Free speech, baby, YEAH!

I thought about this after eating Chinese takeout tonight. Two of my sons got the same fortune in their fortune cookies and we all had a big laugh about it, especially since it was grammatically incorrect. Suddenly I imagined some moderne chick sauntering into a Starbucks with her brand new iPad and deciding to hook it into the WiFi there. So she goes to the Setting page, turns on the WiFi option and immediately sees the phrase Abortion is Murder staring up at her. Maybe it's because I just read that big piece on Randall Terry in the Weekly Standard. I mean, the guy is a complete nut, but he's freaking Beethoven at what he does.

UPDATE: OK, you can watch it in HD, just click on the "gear" shaped thing at the bottom and select 720p-HD. Obviously a fast connection helps facilitate that.

Obama Losing the All-powerful Independents

Oh, well... My opinion: if he decides to take a page from the first black president, he may win re-election. Excerpts:

Obama's approval rating in April 12-14 polling is down most among independents when compared with his 2011 average to date as well as his term average among this group. Currently, 35% of independents approve of the president, nine points off his average from independents this year. Democrats' current ratings are also below what he has averaged thus far in 2011 (down four points), while Republicans' are the same.
...
President Obama is now as unpopular as he has been at any time since he became president. He faces difficult challenges ahead in trying to improve the economy and get the federal budget deficit under control, and must do so with Republicans in control of the House. His ability to navigate these challenges will help determine whether he will be elected to a second term as president. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton all were similarly unpopular at this stage of their presidencies, but the last two were able to turn things around in time to win a second term in office.

All politics is national

Even local politics, Mr. O'Neill. Yeah, I know that's a bold assertion, but check it out. Barney Frank is fighting for his own seat as WSJ reports, and he so he can't help anyone else out. Excerpt:

But the national mood is hostile, and conservative groups would consider his defeat a trophy for their wall. Mr. Frank is now spending more time on his re-election instead of pumping money into the campaigns of vulnerable Democratic lawmakers, the traditional role of a party grandee. As a result, Mr. Frank's focus on his own district will have reverberations in races across the country.

So far this election, Mr. Frank has dipped into his personal re-election account to donate just $35,000 to 12 Democratic candidates, according to campaign-finance figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a fraction of his largesse two years ago, when he gave $248,000 to 86 candidates. This year, he has given $250,000 to the campaign arm of House Democrats, compared with $650,000 in 2008.

So that $248,000 went to whichever Democrat candidates in house races all across the fruited plain needed the money. I don't know where the great part of the $650K went, maybe to the Obama campaign. So I repeat: all politics is national. I don't doubt that Dennis Kucinich gives quite a bit of his campaign contributions away―he barely needs it to win a district which is 80% Democrat.

"Our end is not an earthly city"

I thought this was a good short piece by Father Schall, clarifying the proper perspective of politics and human work within what St. Augustine referred to as the ordo amoris. Here are the concluding paragraphs:

This intercession seems ambiguous. We can say, with Aristotle, that man is by nature a political animal. This would mean that the city and its proper building is a task we ought to achieve, but it is not the highest thing. That city ought to be built in such a way that, within its confines, we can practice human virtue in such a way that we control our vices. Scripture seems to present politics as a zone that, at its best, leaves us alone to achieve our final end, which is not political.

Whenever building the earthly city becomes our chief purpose, we are close to the neo-absolutism that elevates the earthly city to be itself the city of God. This temptation to reverse the priority of the city of God so that it becomes identical with the city of man is very contemporary. This reversal comes about most often when we want to find no intelligence in nature but our own. This leaves us free to construct our own "city" that has no reference to any transcendent end of each created person, no matter what regime or era in which he exists.

The final intercession reads: "Grant joy and peace to us and to all we meet this day." We can ask this in any earthly city, even the worst, because our end is not an earthly city.

"Regular Ramblings" come in all shapes and sizes

I have enjoyed some things which Ross Douthat has written in the past, and I think if I recall they have all been about religion, not politics. Whenever he talks about politics I have trouble seeing his point. To me, it comes across as impressionistic and supercilious, and I'm not really into modern art. His piece on the Beck rally is no exception. He says it was "stranger" than his on-air rants against liberalism, it was like a revival meeting or a product of identity politics without the actual politics. His description is not very descriptive and he was supposedly actually there.

It seems like Mr. Douthat may be trying to prove Mr. Levin correct in his assessment; Levin is quite a bit plainer-spoken than Douthat is.

Douthat is illustrative of a desperate climber trying to claw his way to the top. And he is encouraged on his journey by other obscure light-weights who clap like trained seals for they share in his delusion. But he damns himself with his regular ramblings in the New York Times -- he, a failed author to boot. Thoughts?

Here are my thoughts: Mark Levin will probably not be asked to write for the NY Times any time soon, and Ross Douthat wouldn't be very good at doing talk radio. Perhaps he is a thinker, contrary to Levin's doubts, but he is not good at communicating those thoughts.